Nail-biters and interlopers: What Quebec's election says about the new normal in Canadian politics

Quebec's election campaign is heading into its final 48 hours, and yet it's still not clear whether the incumbent Liberals can eke out a victory or if a new centre-right party will take power for the first time.

The race for third place is almost as close, as the Parti Québécois tries desperately to stave off a challenge from an insurgent group of left-wing sovereigntists.

In other words, just another down-to-the-wire provincial election made unpredictable by interlopers to an old two-party system.

Welcome to the new normal in Canadian politics.

While the cast of characters may be different, Quebec's election has much in common with recent contests in New Brunswick and British Columbia.

Not only will all three involve a photo finish, each featured smaller parties making significant gains in the popular vote, delivering results out of whack with recent history.

In New Brunswick, unprecedented gains by the upstart People's Alliance and the Greens — who won a total of six seats between them — deprived the two established parties of a majority.

Now the Liberals are trying to govern, despite having one seat fewer than the Conservatives in the legislature.

A similar surge by the Greens in last year's election in British Columbia also resulted in a minority government, the province's first since 1952.

It's anybody's guess what will happen in Quebec on Monday, but current projections suggest there is a fair chance it too will end with a minority government, which has only happened twice before in the province.  

"The one thing they all have in common is fractionalization of the vote. This is the new thing," said Richard Johnston, who holds a Canada Research Chair in public opinion and elections at the University of British Columbia.

Unlike at the federal level, where there are currently five parties in the House of Commons, provincial party systems have tended to be limited to two or three players.

But that is no longer true in a growing number of provinces, as new parties emerge to meet a backlog in demand for more choices.

"You've got some strongly held opinions that are not seeing themselves reflected in the legislature. And so along comes a political entrepreneur who is prepared to exploit it," Johnston said.

New kids on the block

Quebec's election features not one, but two younger parties spoiling a system dominated by the Liberals and the PQ, who have alternated power since 1970.

On the left is Québec Solidaire, formed in 2006, and led by an unlikely tandem: Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, the young, posh former student strike organizer, and Manon Massé, a 55-year-old motorcycle-riding feminist.

If they have a good night on Monday, the party could double its seat count to six.

On the right is the Coalition Avenir Québec, brainchild of François Legault, multimillionaire airline founder and one-time die-hard sovereigntist.

He created his party in 2011 as a so-called nationalist third way between the federalist Liberals and the sovereigntist PQ.

Promising tax cuts, lower immigration levels and more suburban roads, Legault's CAQ is the current favourite to win the most seats, thanks to his lead among francophone voters.

Though QS is an avowed sovereigntist party, the question of Quebec independence hasn't featured prominently in the campaign, partly because of fatigue over the issue, partly because the PQ promised not to hold a referendum in a first mandate.

As a result, the campaign has centred on more conventionally left-right issues, such as immigration, minimum wage and child care.

This left-right polarization is occurring across Canada, even at the federal level, said Johnston.

He pointed to studies that suggest the Tories have pulled toward the right, while the Liberals have leaned left, following patterns seen in the U.S. and Australia.

"The major parties in Canada now differ from each other on a broad range of issues in a manner that is more like the class-driven party systems in the rest of the world," Johnston said.

Out of sync?

But with more choice comes more unpredictability. Pollsters have been left scratching their heads lately at wild swings in political opinion.

Since federal politics splintered in the 1990s, wave phenomena — such as the Orange Crush of 2011, when the NDP surged into Opposition — have been more common.

Provincial elections are now seeing similar roller-coaster polling ahead of election day, as voters are apt to change their minds over the course of a campaign.

"Your preference was decided well before the election in a two-party system. Things were a lot simpler," said Christian Bourque, vice president of Leger, one of Quebec's leading polling firms.   

"Now there is a whole new layer of complexity in our political system and people will move their support around a lot."

In the last federal election, according to Leger polling, 30 per cent of voters waited until the last weekend of the campaign to firm up their choice; eight per cent only decided in the voting booth.

Food for thought: the Liberals won the popular vote by 7.5 percentage points.

Among election observers, though, there is some disagreement about whether the current fragmentation and unpredictability in Canadian politics is temporary, or something we should all get used to.

"It's entirely possible that what we're witnessing is a kind of spasm and that the old parties will figure something out and reintegrate voters," said Johnston.

He's skeptical​ that most of the newcomers on the provincial scene, aside from the Greens, will last more than a few election cycles.

Bourque, on the other hand, believes a more permanent realignment is underway, especially in Quebec.  

"I don't think people will want to go back to the level of conformity that we used to have," he said.